March 2025
In January 2025 The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC from hereon) showed the series ‘Eat The Invaders’. Host Tony Armstrong – with the help of scientists, land carers, an artist and a chef – will attempt to turn our unwanted ecological trash into desirable culinary gold, in a provocative attempt to Eat the Invaders.
The second episode was ‘Carp’. Catching an edible native fish is getting more and more unlikely because so many of our waterways are infested with an invader that Australians refuse to eat.
The last bit of that statement niggled me. As a food historian/writer I’m wary of attributing some piece of food-related behaviour to ‘Australians’ a term which erases the multiculinarianism of Australia’s table that is otherwise lauded. I was sure I had seen carp for sale at Vietnamese and Chinese fishmongers.
First though I wanted to see if carp had been eaten by Anglo-Australians.
